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Breathing, fatigue episode

All,
I had a situation this morning that I have not seen before. Brought this horse in to feed, and when I went to let them all out (she had eaten all her feed and hay and pooped) I noticed this girl breathing fast, like she just galloped a marathon. Rediculously fast breathing. I led her out of the stall and she swaggered and was acting sedated. She went and laid down and the breathing issue continued. Called the vet. Horse was down about an hour, when the vet got there she jumped up and her breathing had calmed considerably and vitals were almost back to normal.

This was not characteristic at all of colic or choke. No biting of the flanks, no rolling, good gut sounds and she had just passed manure, no extended neck, gurgling sounds, difficulty swallowing, etc. I wondered if it may be a weed she ate, but the vet said it shouldn't have resolved that fast if it were toxicity. The vet gave her banamine and we'll run some blood work on her - she seems okay now, alert, eating and drinking as though nothing had happened.

Anyone run into something similar? I asked about HYPP as she does have some QH in her, but again the vet didn't really seem to think so.

They all get the same feed - Enrich 32 and hay. Everyone else was fine, alert, and curious about what was going on with their friend. So it seems like we can rule quite a few things out, but can't figure out what the culprit was just yet. Any ideas of things to look into?

A while ago we had the first nice day of the year where it was almost 80 degrees. It was random, so of course all of our horses still had their winter coats. All our horses were huffing and puffing really hard and were all pretty warm. Especially my black gelding who had been standing in the sun. I just turned him loose in the arena for a while and got him out of the sun and he seemed to settle down more.

My horse has heaves and gets heavy breathing episodes occasionally and he gets really tired but his usually accompany some coughing. It occurs when there is not much airflow in the barn or when it gets warm and his allergies get bad. I don't know if your horse has symptoms of heaves or gets allergies but if so that could be the cause.

My horse had a handful of similar episodes (but not so dramatic as laying down, scary enough that I was taking temps and calling the vet though), often triggered by unusual heat, ie standing in the hot sun in a winter coat. Also developed exercise intolerance at the same time he was having these episodes. Turned out to be thumps. Later in the year developed into anhidrosis.

Thumps went as mysteriously as they came. Anhidrosis we finally got a handle on the end of last year, this year remains to be seen.

Ask yourself: "Can I do anything about this?"
If you can, do it. If you can't... then you can't and leave it at that. Worrying achieves nothing but stress.

Lets see, air flow in the barn was good, and this was very early in the morning and still cool outside. Delta - they were normal when the vet got out, temp was normal from the get-go. No coughing. No runny nose or anything.

She was fine when she went IN the stall, breathing was okay and they had not been running. The more I read about HYPP the more I wonder....we are doing the tests for that tomorrow. It was for about an hour and then literally at the snap of a finger seemed okay. Very freaky.

I've had 2 horses with the same symptoms, onset was acute and then just as quickly subsided. One was an allergic reaction to clover hay the other ? but was feeding on a new round bale. Eliminated those food sources, never happened again, however the first horse did develop heaves later in life.